


A Landscape from the Other Side

by Abelarda



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abelarda/pseuds/Abelarda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-series. John Childermass visits Arabella Strange after the disappearance of her husband and Gilbert Norrell. Unfortunately, Henry Woodhope does exactly the same thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Landscape from the Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hek/gifts).



> _Written by me. Translated also by me, which explains all the mistakes in the text. I'm not a native speaker of English, I know, but believe me, I'm really doing my best. :)_

Arabella Strange doesn’t feel well outside of England.

Of course, she’s grateful to the Greysteels for their concern. She have never been the one to whimper and that’s why she smiles just as they expect from her, as any well mannered lady would. She sees that it makes them happy: our dear Bella starts to recover, they say and bring her strengthening cordials, treat her with the rarest delicacies, take her for long walks. They’re doing everything to prove their friendship, but don’t really care what is the one thing that Arabella desires the most.

And the truth is that she isn’t able to love the Mediterranea at all. She feels like a complete stranger in Padua, Florence and Venice, all those sunny, bright places, which are usually visited by the British to leave behind memories of fog and rain. Perhaps that's why, even though she values Flora’s friendship, she also understands that never really understand each other. Flora is like Florence, beautiful and radiant, her name says it all, a funny convergence that Arabella’s sharp wit picks up almost from the beginning; Mediterranean climate fits open and cheerful Miss Greysteel perfectly. But Arabella, always a reasonable daughter of a vicar, can’t bear neither the diminutive “Bella” - she knows her own strengths and weaknesses far too well to be impressed by such cheap compliments - nor the bells of the cathedral, reminding her of those of Lost-hope.

“Talk to me,” she asks Flora, Aunt Greysteel, Bonifazia. “Talk to me and I think I can master it.”

But the voice of someone who has never experienced real grief is unable to drown out the haunting tone of fairy tunes. Arabella listens to the joyful chatter of her new friends with growing impatience, and increasingly yearns for someone with whom she can talk without any pretense, artificial smiles or oppressive cordiality. The only person that comes into her head is Emma Pole, but when she’s trying to ask Flora about her, she learns that her old friend left England and nobody really knows where she stays at the moment.

Days go by, as alike as two reflections in the mirror, and Arabella becomes more and more aware of one thing: no matter how hard she tries to postpone certain things, they’ll come and find her after all, and won’t let her forget no matter how hard she tries. One day, in a fit of sudden anger, she breaks the large mirror in her bedroom. It was an accident, she explains to the Greysteels, even though she knows that at least the doctor suspects the truth. And then she finds an old well, in which she sees Jonathan’s face, and she understands this was what she feared most; the valediction makes her unable to force herself to smile anymore. And - although she prefers to pretend otherwise - she greets the news that Greysteels intend to return to England with relief.

Even when she learns that their old house in Ashfair disappeared from the surface of the earth with no traces left, she isn’t going to change her plans. Despite the numerous invitations from the Greysteels, she buys a house in Clun, as close to where she lived with Jonathan as possible, and then she escapes from her unwanted company and shuts herself away from everyone, finally left alone within the four walls of her new home. She draws a lot, much more than in the past, sketches of Padua and of Clun. The only place where she doesn’t intend to come back, even in her imagination, is Lost-hope. She tears the letters from Flora into small pieces without even reading them and tosses the scraps into the fire; she does exactly the same with the letters from Henry. She really doesn’t feel like communicating with the rest of the world. The service that she employ - only two people in fact, a cook and a maid - have known her long before she married Jonathan and do not intend to force her with anything that she could not cope.

What plagues her the most is not the absence of Jonathan - she have become used to it after all the years spent in London when her husband almost didn’t notice her presence, busy with his books - but the realization of how much everything has changed since then. Here, in the silence of a small town, it is almost as if they never left Ashfair at all, never met Gilbert Norrell, as if everything that took Jonathan from her never happened. Province helps her to cherish these illusions, to cut her off from everything that reminds her of Lost-hope, its balls and dances and music, full of melancholy. Yet still she has the impression that she’ll never be able to forget about it.

Sometimes in the evenings she goes out for a stroll. She wanders through the old, well known paths, once again trying to pretend that nothing has changed. In these moments she feels almost the same way as in the past, as a young wife, eagerly waiting for the return of her reckless, but loving husband. And then she reaches the place where old house should stand, and she wakes up from her illusions: old paths lead into empty spaces or end abruptly amongst the trees, everything stops suddenly and without any warnings, in the same way as her marriage did. Sometimes - just sometimes - Arabella feels that if she dared to go one step further, she would enter the King’s Roads, as Jonathan did in the past, and perhaps these roads, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time, would allow her to find their old house, wherever it can be. But she’s never able to muster enough courage: she remembers too well where the King’s Roads can lead her, and she doesn’t intend to risk a return to Faerie.

One evening she is found by another shadow of the past, Jeremy Johns’ cat. She is able to recognize it without the slightest doubt: a grey, one-eyed animal with a ripped ear walks over to her, rubs around her legs, and then jumps into the darkness and disappears. It visits her house from time to time, perhaps in between his journeys through other worlds, and the cook, instructed by Arabella, always feeds it a few tasty morsels.

But time passes and apart from the cat’s visits, there are less and less elements that remind her of the past, yet it bothers her no longer: perhaps it's the right time to come to terms with the fact that everything changes. Even the memories of Lost-hope, although they don’t fade completely - and, in fact, Arabella doubts if they ever will - begin to fade, blurring slowly in her mind, as if hidden behind a dense English fog. Even the thought of Jonathan doesn’t hurt quite as much as it used to. The silence of the province heals her wounds way better than the hot Mediterranean sun.

Sometimes she asks the servants about rumors of herself and she is constantly amazed by the sympathy that their neighbours feel for her. It seems that nearly everyone in Clun think that the widow of Jonathan Strange is probably a bit eccentric, but her father was a vicar and a decent man and Arabella is not very much different from him. She lives quietly, after all, doesn’t exalt herself above the others and even though she doesn’t intend to visit the church, she gives sufficiently large donations to charity, so perhaps it’s better not to pry about it. Besides, as the people of Clun whisper among themselves, dealing with magicians is no laughing matter, and who knows what spells Arabella Strange learned from her late husband before he got mad.

*

It all begins on cold autumn night, when Arabella is suddenly awaken from her sleep by the sound of raindrops beating against her bedroom window. Moments later, the clock strikes three in the morning; it's too early to get up, and too late to look for someone else's company. But Arabella haven’t been sleeping too well lately, and she knows for sure that probably she won’t be able to fall asleep again, even if she decides to stay in bed. That’s why she lights a candle, wraps a shawl over her shoulders and, as quietly as possible, goes to the living room. The whole house is immersed in a deep sleep, and Arabella doesn’t want to wake either cook or maid: she fears their anxious questions and sympathetic glances too much. She knows what people are saying about the widow of Jonathan Strange, and she doesn’t intend to give anyone another reason to gossip. So, she sits in a chair by the window and tries to read a book. Three in the morning is a cursed hour, full of memories that one would gladly forget, so it’s best to drown out all the thoughts and longings, while she’s still able.

When the book falls out of her hand and Arabella almost falls asleep in the chair, she suddenly hears the sound of footsteps. Still not fully awake, she watches through the window. There’s a big black horse circling around the house, his hooves hitting the mudded earth with a soft thud. Perhaps it’s a kelpie, Arabella thinks with horror, and after a while she starts to laugh at her own fears. It's unbelievable what thoughts can haunt one’s mind at three in the morning, between dream and reality, she thinks to herself. The supposed kelpie is probably just an animal that escaped from the neighbour’s stable and now tries to get back to the farm. And indeed, the horse disappears in darkness, but after a while in its place she’s able to see a black silhouette of a man. He seems more like a vision from a dream than like a real person, with his dark, tousled hair streaming down his shoulders, and the flaps of his greatcoat waving in the wind. The phantom goes straight to the door and Arabella retreats into the corner of the room, shifting the shawl on her shoulders. She’s not able to control the sudden chill that overwhelmed her. It’s almost as if the underworld wants to claim the right to rule over her, although she’s not quite sure whether the phantom carries a message from Jonathan or from Faerie.

After a moment, the door opens with a soft squeak, as the servants never remember to close them at night because the area is so safe, and the light falls on the man's face. This time Arabella recognizes him without any doubts and feels the urge to throw him out the door, because if there ever was a person really close to Gilbert Norrell, the man who destroyed Jonathan’s life, is surely would be John Childermass. And it's beyond all reason that this strange servant, this quiet advisor of her husband’s greatest enemy, now stands in her doorway wrapped in a greatcoat dripping from the rain and quietly waits, not saying anything. He resembles Jonathan, notices Arabella, the way that her husband looked when he finally returned to England after the battle of Waterloo. He had the same look in his eyes, cautious, wistful and completely out of this world. The resemblance is accidental, but Arabella can’t pretend she doesn’t notice it, so she rises from her chair and takes a step toward the door.

“Leave this house immediately!” she says in a loud, perhaps even too loud voice, and though she still tries to remain calm, just as one would expect from a pastor’s daughter, her eyes reveal everything that she doesn’t intend to say: get out of here, you rascal, you rogue, you scoundrel, you have no right to come here after what you did, so get out of here and never come back.

But Childermass seems to understand, maybe even too well. He straightens up, leaning against the doorframe, and looks at Arabella with bitter sarcasm in his eyes.

“I’m a magician,” he says quietly. “And I promised something to Jonathan.”

The very sound of her husband’s name surprises her enough to make her forget what she was going to say. There’s something wrong with that shabby servant speaking so familiarly about someone who was once a friend of his master, but there had always been something in Childermass that eluded common sense, he seemed to be much more than an ordinary servant, so perhaps Arabella shouldn’t feel surprised at all. Watching carefully the gloomy figure that looks like a phantom from the moors, she is able to believe that he indeed is a magic user. This doesn’t explain the purpose of his visit, however, not after the sudden disappearance of both Jonathan and Gilbert Norrell, as she was told, when the black tower took them into some other world, maybe even into the afterlife. And now Childermass dares to appear before her, to talk about her husband and has the nerve to expect that she’ll let him into the house, as if he were someone close to her.

“Whatever it was, I don’t think it helped him,” she answers coldly. There is no reason to hide her disdain for Childermass, no reason to engage in a conversation at three in the morning, in the light of a nearly burnt candle, wearing a nightgown and a shawl. And if rudeness can help her to get rid of the intruder, she sees no reason not to use it.

But Childermass’ reaction surprises her. The man stoops slightly, as if her words hit a soft spot that Arabella does not have the slightest idea if it even exists.

“Mrs Strange,” he says slowly, “I promised him that I’ll deal with his magic, if he suffers a defeat. I was supposed to show it to the world and explain the way that he understood it. But if I’m to do it, I need to see his notes, his belongings, anything left of him.”

“Ah, and you surely need it at three in the morning,” snorts Arabella. “And, let me guess, not asking my permission at all. Pity that I managed to wake up and ruin your plans. That’s what you call bad luck.”

“Furthermore, I accidentally forgot to take a bottle of ether with me,” answers Childermass sharply, raising his eyebrows. “Now, that’s what you call bad luck, Mrs Strange.”

Arabella has to admit that despite the growing anger she can appreciate his witty remark. She would never expect grim and taciturn Childermass of such skills. She thinks for a moment, watches him with wary eyes, and the man stoically withstands her gaze.

“Come back at ten and then we can talk,” says Arabella with obvious reluctance. “And get yourself clean, for God’s sake.”

*

He comes again in the morning, punctually at ten, as she told him. In broad daylight he doesn’t look like a phantom, more like someone who has been travelling most of the night and didn’t have a chance to sleep in a proper bed. His greatcoat is still a mess, but at least he tied his hair. He seems less threatening than in the nighttime, thinner and paler, with dark rings under her eyes and a tired face he finally seems to be a normal man, not deprived of purely human weaknesses, and Arabella finally feels that she doesn’t have to be afraid of him. Of course, it doesn’t mean that she wants to talk to him at all. He’s still the same Childermass, after all, a former servant of Gilbert Norrell, their greatest enemy, just as Jonathan’s first spell revealed years ago. There is no reason to believe otherwise.

Arabella watches him from a first floor window, observing as he approaches, riding his big black horse, jumps out of the saddle and goes to the door. For a moment, she struggles with the desire to call the maid and, despite her promise, won’t let him in, pretending that she’s too sick to receive visits, but she already knows him well enough to be sure that it won’t stop him: Childermass always does what he wants, whether with one’s permission or without it, and he might as well decide to search the rooms even if she wouldn’t let him.

Besides, it’s already too late.

She goes downstairs and quietly sits in the chair, not intending to show that she waits for his visit, but despite her efforts she feels that Childermass already knows. He looks at her with a grimace that is hard to decipher, half mocking, half alert, and he folds his arms over his chest in a nonchalant gesture. He doesn’t sit down, even though Arabella points at the chair next to her, but comes closer, making her uneasy once again, and leans over her. His dark eyes pierce her with a fiery gaze.

“You promised that you’ll show me his notes, Mrs Strange,” he says firmly, with self-confidence, as if he was used to giving orders, an unusual thing for a mere servant. There’s something in his face, something stubborn and arrogant, that tells her that he won’t give up so easily. But she is used to deal with troublesome men and she really doesn’t think that Childermass, despite his grim exterior, it more difficult to restrain than Jonathan or even Henry. Therefore, she doesn’t intend to show him any weakness. She straightens in her chair and gazes at him with a haughty expression.

“No, I promised that we'll talk,” she responds coldly.

Childermass shrugs.

“It’s all the same to me,” he states with a calm voice. “Anyway, I will be grateful if you spare me some time.”

Arabella doesn’t trust him even for a moment, as even his courtesy spoken in this tone seems to be no more than a mockery, but she’s not going to get provoked.

“No, I don’t think you will, Childermass, but I suppose it doesn’t change anything,” she says icily. “There is nothing left, nothing at all. Everything is gone, both our houses, his belongings, notes, even his clothes. It’s as if he never existed.”

Childermass seems to be surprised as if he didn’t foresee such a possibility. He thinks for a moment, with a deep wrinkle on his forehead, but doesn’t try to pry more out of her. Instead, he falls into a chair and, ignoring Arabella, pulls a deck of cards from a pocket of his greatcoat. He shuffles them, places them on the table and quickly runs his gaze over the spread.

“You’re not telling me the whole truth, Mrs Strange,” he points out, smiling wryly. “Although I must admit, you're quite a good liar, one of the best that I ever happened to deal with. And yet, you’re not able to cheat my cards.”

This time it’s Arabella’s turn to feel surprised. She looks at the strange man, half a servant, half a magician, and she has no idea what to say. She has been searching for Jonathan’s traces long enough to know that everything is lost, and she doesn’t understand how on earth anyone can think otherwise. Well, maybe except for Jeremy Johns’ cat.

“There are some notes, I see it clearly,” Childermass mutters under his breath, more to himself than to her, in a slightly irritated tone, and picks up his cards from the table. “But even the cards are not able to tell where they are. What have you done with them, Mrs Strange?”

Arabella shakes her head.

“I tell you for the last time, there’s nothing left, neither here nor in London.” She frowns and suddenly raises her voice. “Stop harassing me! And even if I had anything left, do you really think that I could ever trust you, Childermass? This is all Norrell’s doing, Norrell’s and yours. Now my husband is missing and the only thing I have left are my memories, and you- you-”

Cards fall out from Childermass’ hands. He collects them quickly, and Arabella has the impression that he dropped them just to hide his confusion. It doesn’t fit into the image of Childermass she remembers, arrogant and resolute, and she’s not able to explain why he reacted in such an unexpected way. When he finally decides to speak, his voice is muffled and hoarse, as if he made a decision.

“Do you have a silver bowl?”

Arabella nods, as she recalls that Jonathan was using a similar spell from time to time, and although she has no idea what Childermass is planning to do, she calls for the maid. And when he tries to cast a spell, she leans over the bowl and waits for the image to appear. The surface of the water trembles slightly, but there is nothing to be seen, as the silver bowl reflects only the ceiling and Arabella’s face. Childermass blinks, examining the bowl. Suddenly he seems relieved, and his face loses any visible signs of tension. Now he seems to be a completely different person, Arabella notices in surprise.

“I’m not sure if magic wanted me to find these notes,” says Childermass slowly. “But I could not get any clearer guidance.”

“How come?” snorts Arabella. “You saw nothing at all.”

Childermass shakes his head slowly. There’s a peculiar look in his eyes, an emotion that Arabella is not able to recognize.  
“You really don’t understand, Mrs Strange, do you? You’re the note that I am looking for.” He looks at her seriously. “You’re his last letter to me.”

*

Childermass visits her every day, asking about some strange magical issues that Arabella doesn’t really have much of a clue. It's pointless, she tells him every evening, reminding him that she’s only Jonathan’s wife and not Jonathan himself. Childermass winces and remains silent, as if these words were particularly unpleasant for him. But after a few days, when they sit in the living room, with a pile of discarded notes growing on the table between them, he reveals a bit more.

“There is a man,” he sighs, picking up the drawing and looking at him gloomily. “Vinculus. Well, he’s not a man, actually. He’s a living book of the Raven King.”

Arabella doesn’t really understand what he means by these words. She heard a bit about Vinculus before, of course, and even recalls that he sold Jonathan a few spells, but is not able to imagine a man, a living book, whose skin carries a message from the Raven King. Even for a person that had some previous experiences with magic, this story seems unbelievable.

“There are symbols of a prophecy written on his skin,” explains Childermass, showing her a few sketches. “Just like these, you see. They changed before my very eyes, and then Norrell and,” he hesitates, “and your husband disappeared from this world.”

Arabella listens to his strange story about Vinculus, marks on his skin and the mysterious prophecy, then looks at the drawings and frowns.

“Shouldn’t you rather try to decipher it together with the other magicians, and not with me?” she asks in surprise. “I really have no idea what they mean, I've never seen anything like these.”

Childermass shrugs.

“I already visited the other magicians and honestly, I don’t feel even a bit smarter than before. Let them try anyway, as they wish, they have their ways, I have mine.” He looks at her with a tinge of irony. “Time will tell which ones are more effective.”

“Is it because of your cards?” asks Arabella knowingly. “You came to me because they told you to?”

Childermass neither confirms nor denies it, smiling with a trace of mockery, but Arabella already knows that she’s right. And for a brief moment she feels tormented by the nagging thought that his half-smile reminds her of Jonathan.

As time goes by, she notices more and more similarities. When Childermass sits with her in the living room in the evenings, wading through his notes and drawings, Arabella can’t help the feeling that something starts coming back to normal, and for the first time since Jonathan’s disappearance she begins to feel calm. Childermass seems just as absentminded as her husband, when his thoughts wander through the world of mysteries and symbols, and just as her husband he doesn’t seem to hear what she says to him. Arabella herself doesn’t notice when one evening she unconsciously leans closer and closer to him, staring at the drawings. Childermass absently shows her the symbols, and even though she has no idea what can they mean, she studies them carefully, trying to find any links and similarities between them. It's like learning an unknown, dead language, she explains, not hiding her fascination with the strange shaped letters. Then Childermass looks at her ironically and expresses his regrets that a lady like her has to stay in Clun instead of working together with Messrs Young and Champollion and trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone, unfortunately, it's very sad, Mrs Strange. And Arabella just smiles in amusement.

Then comes the time for more detailed sketches that try to locate the position of the symbols on Vinculus’ skin. Childermass hesitates for a moment before he decides to show them to Arabella, and after a while the reason becomes clear. His drawings reproduce all the symbols written on Vinculus’ body without missing even the smallest details. Arabella looks at the drawings in a deadpan manner, and finally notices that Childermass is much better anatomist than a servant. A lady should not see these, states Childermass with a sarcastic smile, and she takes up his challenge. She points out the uneven lines of the sketches and a few disturbed proportions, and then says something about his inability to draw. And when she sees that Childermass probably would like to strangle her with his bare hands, she raises her eyebrows with a slightly rakish look and asks whether he intends to use violence against a lady even though he cares about her morality that much.

Childermass starts to laugh. His laughter sounds rough and a little hoarse, just the way she she would expect from him.

“No, I was wrong, Mrs Strange, you're no lady at all. But perhaps it's for the better.”

“Let's just say that I consider it a compliment,” says Arabella mockingly. She doesn’t add that the true ladies do not dance in Lost-hope with strange gentlemen - this memory, though a bit blurred, still doesn’t let her sleep at night - or accept some vagrants under their roofs. The first is not a tale that Childermass should know, not yet and perhaps never at all, and the second - the second leads her to asking a completely spontaneous question.

“Childermass, where do you actually stay overnight?”

The man shrugs, as if it’s just the minor problem, unworthy of any attention. Arabella can’t fight the intrusive thought that it can be either a room in the inn or a garden patch. The latter seems more likely, despite the bad autumn weather.

“I have a spare room in the attic,” she proposes unexpectedly. “It was meant for a butler if I ever decided to employ one, but as you can see, I don’t have a butler yet and the room is empty. You can stay there, if you wish.” And, knowing that Childermass doesn’t like to have debts, she adds after a moment’s thought, “This way it would be easier for us to work together.” 

She doesn’t expect any thanks and indeed, there are none, but it doesn’t really matter. Childermass nods as if he have considered her words and appreciate the common sense behind them - perhaps it’s the greatest compliment that one could expect from him - and the next day he comes up with an old, worn-out trunk.

According to the maid’s report, Childermass’ possessions are very modest. There’s not much more than a deck of cards and an old black horse, which in fact doesn’t look like a kelpie at all. In his trunk he carries some old clothes, a box with a pair of pistols, a few books, some other stuff, unworthy of even mentioning. And, most of all, there’s paper, a lot of paper filled with nervous, edgy handwriting and some strange drawings. Arabella listens to the report, frowning, and can’t fight the feeling life is really unfair for Childermass. This man, even if he took their enemy’s side, proved to be a faithful and dedicated servant. And even though, he apparently can’t afford not only the roof over his head - Arabella has the suspicion bordering on conviction that her theory of a garden patch was true - but actually almost anything at all, and the biggest mystery is how he managed to survive after Norrell’s disappearance. She’s trying to inquire of him concerning this matter, even several times, but Childermass belittles her questions with a shrug, as usual.

“It's all water over the dam. There’s no sense dwelling on the past.” He smiles bitterly. “Even if he didn’t disappear, I couldn’t stay with him anyway.”

“Norrell truly was an ungrateful man,” murmurs Arabella with a hint of disgust. “He wouldn’t get that far without you.”

Childermass raises his eyebrows and looks at her with a peculiar seriousness.

“Neither your husband without you, Mrs Strange.”

*

It’s hard to work with a prophecy that doesn’t allow to be deciphered, and all their efforts seem doomed to failure. The symbols written on Vinculus’ skin are vague and ambiguous and even his deck is not able to help him understand them. This magic proves to be much stronger than he has ever experienced. Childermass knows that Jonathan, calling him a magician, gave him a credit of trust which he doesn’t feel worthy. Being almost a magician is much worse than not knowing any magic at all, it's like standing with one foot in the real world and the other in a dream. A crack like this sooner or later leads to madness, thinks Childermass and recalls how he felt before getting his precious deck. Now even the cards are not enough to let him go through the mirror, and all the spells he have ever learned from Norrell, even the simplest ones, fail him. That’s why he studies the symbols with growing frustration, knowing that they’re his only hope of finding the entrance to the King’s Roads.

But Arabella seems almost as hard to decipher as the symbols. There are many things that she doesn’t speak of, she keeps her secrets to herself and certainly isn’t going to trust him. Childermass is able to penetrate some of her secrets, but some still remain hidden. It’s almost as if even his deck fails to overpower Arabella Strange’s strength of will, he thinks, watching the enigmatic card spread once again.

Besides, he has as many secrets as she does, or perhaps even more. He rarely speaks to Arabella about Jonathan, rarely uses his name, even though in his mind he talks with him all the time, asking questions that never get answered, and when he sees the Knight of Wands, he can’t overcome the feeling of melancholy.

The Knight of Wands doesn’t leave him in peace, on the contrary, he appears in every spread and constantly torments him, looking at him arrogantly through a mess of red curls, as if he’s trying to challenge him. Every evening Childermass closes himself in the attic - attic again, he thinks bitterly, trying to chase away the memories, although this one seems much more cozy than in Norrell’s house - and sets out the cards for another day. Every night he has difficulty falling asleep, so he nervously paces the floor - the room is ten paces long by six wide, he knows it just as well as any prisoner would know the size of his cell - and sometimes he tries to reach into the mirror.

He never gets any response from the other side.

As time passes, he begins to set out his cards in the living room, in Arabella’s presence. It's quite safe, he thinks, after all, the deck is too complicated to understand and no one else would be able to read the spreads, except for him. The others were never able, neither Norrell - Childermass is convinced that this is the very reason why his former master wasn’t able to accept the magic so different from his own - nor Jonathan. Apparently that must be the nature of his cards. Perfect magic for a thief and a thug, reflects Childermass, laughing bitterly. He knows that he’ll never be as respected as either Norrell or Jonathan. His own magic is the magic of shadows and phantasms, secrets and concealments, and therefore won’t get him any applause. But at least he can freely use it in other people’s presence.

He underestimates the intuition of Faerie’s former prisoner.

One evening, the same as the previous ones, Childermass calmly sets out his cards on the table, not expecting any risk, he’s doing it for a few days now, after all. Arabella sits next to him, concentrating on Vinculus’ symbols, and doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing, at least it seems so. But suddenly she breaks away from the drawings, leans on his shoulder and, without further notice, picks up the Knight of Wands. Childermass turns toward her so violently that his elbow hits the edge of the table, he notices it with the conscious part of his mind, but forgets to feel any pain. In fact, he sees only the card - Jonathan - in somebody else’s hands, the ruined spread, the Five of Cups distanced from the remaining cards, devoid of any connection with the rest. And perhaps it's true, perhaps Jonathan is his only link with the King’s Roads, with magic, well, with everything significant in his life.

“Give him back, Mrs Strange,”, he hisses, reaching a sore arm, and quickly pulls the Knight of Wands from her hand. “He doesn’t belong to you.”

He clasps the card in his grasp, nearly crushing it. He knows that he’s not telling the truth, the Knight of Wands belongs to her, he always did, even before they came to London. It is he, Childermass, who doesn’t have the slightest right to own him, not after staying in London with Norrell instead of standing by his side, as he asked him to. He puts the card back on the table, next to the Five of Cups, and instinctively smoothes the wrinkled paper. Arabella looks at him with confusion, as if she’s aware that she did something inexcusable.

“You drew them yourself?” she asks quietly, looking strangely timid.

Childermass calms down with difficulty, rubbing his bruised elbow. Finally, he twists his lips in a usual smile, half mocking and half bitter.

“Don’t you see uneven lines and disturbed proportions?” he asks provocatively, but nods, sending her a conciliatory look. “What about your own sketches, Mrs Strange? You were quite skilled in drawing not so long ago.” He lowers his voice. “He showed me your sketches, the ones that depicted the King’s Roads.”

“Jonathan showed you my drawings?” repeats Arabella in amazement. “Why? Was it because of Norrell?”

“No.” Childermass leans over the table, he speaks slowly, carefully choosing his words. The sentences are brief and laconic, as if he doesn’t have the strength to say anything more. “It happened when he thought you were dead. I visited him then. We talked about magic, mostly. About the Roads. Your drawings were supposed to be in his book, the one that Norrell wanted to disappear.” He looks questioningly at Arabella. “Do you still have them with you?”

Arabella shakes his head.

“They also went missing, I’m afraid. Just as his notes.” She shivers in disgust. “All the better, I wouldn’t want to watch them anyway. And I'm never going to draw again.”

Childermass looks at her solemnly, his dark eyes devoid of the usual irony.

“That’s a pity, Mrs Strange,” he says quietly. “They were really beautiful.”

Arabella blushes slightly and apparently doesn’t know what to say, so she just gets up and goes out of the living room, nodding slightly as if in thanks for the compliment. Childermass watches her leaving, remembering that visit. He recalls the conversation with Jonathan, everything they said against all reason, and, most of all, all the things they didn’t dare to say. When he closes his eyes, he’s able to see Arabella’s drawings, still vivid in his memory. He remembers every detail, subtle lines and shadings, so different from his own sketches, rough and simplified. But, most of all, he remembers his first thought when he saw them.

Jonathan couldn’t know that, but he, Childermass, was skilled enough in reading drawings to know that the ones sketched by Arabella could become an entrance to Faerie. They are beautiful, he had said then, as he said to his wife a few moments ago, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He didn’t want to reveal too much to this man, immersed in deep mourning; it wouldn’t be wise to encourage him of doing something desperate. Jonathan found his way to the King’s Roads without him, using mirrors, but at least Childermass can have no regrets.

Well, almost.

“Perhaps not everyone can enter the King’s Roads,” murmurs Childermass quietly, feeling that he’s already torn between the loyalty to Jonathan, Arabella and himself.

*

At the end of October, Henry Woodhope decides to send a letter to his sister once again. He doesn’t feel discouraged by the lack of response to previous letters, he knows Arabella well enough to know that she prefers to get through mourning alone. But no mourning should last forever. Perhaps it’s better to live as a widow, Henry thinks, than as a wife of a mad and drunken magician. The latter seems the worst insult he can imagine, especially now, when he already knows how much harm the magic did to his family. He constantly regrets that he didn’t protest before, perhaps at the very beginning, when Jonathan bought a few spells from a wandering magician. This was the first step on the road that eventually led him to madness.

But as time passes, Henry feels that sooner or later Arabella will be needing his company, even though perhaps she is not aware of it. All Hallows’ Eve is an accursed time when the gates to the underworld open wide and the pagan magic begins to rule the world. One shouldn’t spend it in solitude, especially when one is a young widow who doesn’t even know where the burial place of her deranged husband is. Henry has no idea what actually happened to Jonathan. He corresponds regularly with Flora Greysteel, but when he tries to question her about it, her letters don’t explain anything, on the contrary, they raise even more questions. That’s why Henry is fully convinced that Arabella shouldn’t live alone.

Of course, corresponding with Flora Greysteel is not something that he intends to admit. He knows his sister well enough to know that she’ll consider it spying and violating of her freedom, even if he does so only for her sake.

Eventually, he writes to Arabella a completely different letter than he originally intended, which appeals to her sense of decency. The young widow shouldn’t live alone or with a few servants, he stresses, perhaps it would be better for her to live with a man, a close relative, of course, to avoid any possible gossips. His vicarage in Great Hitherden is a beautiful, friendly place, with lots of greenery, forests and hills, all the things that she is fond of. She can stay there as long as she likes and leave her house in Clun behind.

Strangely enough, after a while he gets the answer, unlike to his previous letters, and this fact alone truly is a kind of achievement; he really ceased to count on it. But Arabella doesn’t seem to share his enthusiasm, as her answer is polite, yes, but indifferent. I don’t want to leave Clun, Henry, she writes, I'm too tired for the trip, and the weather is cold and rainy, anyway, it's dangerous to set out on the road in late autumn. Perhaps one day, in spring or better in summer, when the weather gets warmer, but certainly not now. Besides, Henry, I have my activities and obligations, I can’t just leave everything and go on holiday. You’re the one that really should understand that.

Henry reads the letter and presses his lips together. When he does the grimace, he looks exactly like Arabella, as they share not only the same blood, but also many similarities, even though they may not be seen at first glance. That’s why he knows that nothing, neither the weariness nor the weather, could stop his sisters before doing what she considered right, and he really doesn’t think that this time it should be any different. Everything that she wrote about is just a bad excuse in which he sees no reason to believe. The only thing that could stop Arabella from coming to Great Hitherden is her own will and the reluctance to leave her home in Clun, where she probably spends his days longing for Jonathan - as if he deserves it! - and sinking deeper into melancholy.

It's funny, thinks Henry, who ceased to understand women about two years ago, after the unexpected wedding of Miss Watkins and Thomas Pearce, the latter being nearly everything that he himself is not, which means a trifler surprisingly similar to Jonathan - and she did it after all this time when she was giving him hope that she’d rather be Mrs Woodhope! Arabella’s behavior defies the common sense in exactly the same way as the unexpected decision of his would-be bride. And for a while he asks himself if he should perhaps ignore this first one in exactly the same way as he ignored the second.

But Henry can also be stubborn and he sometimes feels the need to stand his ground, too, as it befits a vicar, even though he shows it in a different way than his sister. Therefore, he packs his luggage and sets off, leaving the vicarage in the hands of a trusted few. The journey isn’t very pleasant, but, tormented by memories, he forgets about any discomfort. The very thought of Clun raises unpleasant memories. Henry recalls Jonathan’s madness and his own despair, when they were both were convinced of Arabella’s death, and admits to himself that perhaps he should regret some of his stubbornness concerning the journey. But it's far too late to turn back home, when he notices his sister’s house right in front of his eyes.

He has to admit that the building doesn’t look the way he have imagined. He assumed that he’d see a dark, gloomy estate, nearly as scary as Jonathan himself, but the house is cozy and friendly, and looks almost inviting. When Henry comes in, he expects to find Arabella reading a book, perhaps making a sketch, but certainly not watching the drawings of a naked man of startling anatomical accuracy, covered with strange tattoos. These sketches make Henry blush, even though he doesn’t blush very often, but Arabella seems completely devoid of any shame.

“You really shouldn’t watch such... images,” he says, frowning, and looks at her reprovingly, waiting for her to at least bow her head. There are things that are not befitting the daughter and the sister of a vicar, even if she’s also the widow of the greatest magician of modern times, and Henry definitely expects her keep this in mind. He prepares himself to give her a lecture about morality - he doesn’t want to admit it, but it surely would make him a great pleasure - but has no idea what to do when Arabella, instead of feeling embarrassed, with imperturbable expression takes the sketches from his hands and arranges them neatly in a drawer.

“These are magical texts, Henry, written on a magician’s skin.” She sees his stunned face and starts to laugh. “What do you actually expect?”

“You’ve changed, Bell,” murmurs Henry nervously. “You were never interested in magic before. Now, if these are really magical texts, as you say, how come-”

“Of course they are,” says Arabella coldly. There is a hint of indomitability in her voice that resembles Jonathan’s madness and Henry feels that he’s not able to control his sister anymore, the way that he was never able to control his brother-in-law. But when he tries to protest, he notices a somber man with disheveled hair who stands in the doorway, watching them in silence. You should choose your servants more carefully, Bell, this one looks as if he’s about to slit our throats, would like to say Henry, but suddenly in a gloomy man he recognizes the former servant of Gilbert Norrell, so he bites his tongue. Perhaps hiring him is not a bad idea, after all.

“You shouldn’t deal in magic, then,” he states, waiting for Norrell’s servant to support him. “It always ends badly.”

But the man doesn’t say anything, he just watches them carefully with inscrutable expression. It’s Arabella, to Henry’s disappointment, who decides to speak instead of the servant.

“I don’t think you know what you're talking about, Henry,” she points out and frowns.

The discussion is over. And when Henry sits on the bed in the guest room, he feels fatigue coming over him. Now he knows that convincing his sister to do anything is going to be extremely hard. Instead of sensible, even-tempered Arabella there is someone else that have taken her place, an unknown woman that makes him wonder if she really is his sister, or perhaps it’s another one of Jonathan’s magic tricks, the last one before his disappearance. The only thing that lifts up Henry’s mood is the awareness that he’s not alone with her. Perhaps he can count on Norrell’s former servant’s support. After all, with a master like this he surely learned something about magic, and maybe he’ll intervene if necessary.

At least that’s what Henry hopes for.

*

He can act freely only when Woodhope falls asleep, and Arabella goes out for a stroll. She’s trying to be helpful, that’s true, but Childermass slowly loses any hope of ever managing to decipher the message written on Vinculus’ skin. And if the magic of the symbols isn’t going to obey him, perhaps he shall try Jonathan’s method once again. He knows the sequence of the spells, after all, so it shouldn’t be too difficult, he remembers everything perfectly and doesn’t need any book to do the magic. Besides, he saw that it really worked, hell, it worked too well to stop Jonathan from going through the mirror! That’s why he’s going to try until he succeeds.

He sits on a chair in the living room, in front of a mirror. His reflection stares at him gloomily with dark eyes that are not a bit closer to solving the mystery than his own, and Childermass winces. He’d gladly give a few years of his life to see a fragment of the King’s Roads through the glass.

Perhaps it's the matter of arousing enough magic to blur the gap between two worlds. Jonathan often used alcohol, well, he used it too often, actually, but there are still other ways, perhaps even a bit safer. Laudanum should be adequate, he thinks. He doesn’t use it often, remembering that before he got his card, it almost drove him crazy, but Jonathan - or maybe Norrell? - said that all Aureates were mad to some extent, so this time he decides to take a chance. With this in mind, Childermass shifts in his chair once again, looking in the mirror, and pulls a bottle of laudanum that he bought a few weeks earlier from his pocket.

It does nothing. When Arabella returns from a walk, the bottle is half empty, and Childermass has problems with focusing his eyes on one point, but the entrance to the King’s Roads still remains shut.

“He told me how to go through the mirror,” murmurs Childermass, as he notices her questioning look. “He told me the sequence of the spells, well, he told me everything. But it’s not working.”

“Who, Vinculus?” Arabella looks at him with wide eyes. “Did you manage to decipher these symbols? Or was it a different spell?”

“There are two worlds,” says Childermass quietly, staring into space. “I can see them sometimes. The latter reminds me of your drawings, Mrs Strange. The ones that perished with him.”

“The King’s Roads,” whispers Arabella with pale lips, and Childermass nods.

“It shouldn’t be difficult, he did it once in my presence, without any preparation,” the goddamn idiot, he thinks, remembering his own feeling of powerlessness, “and it succeeded immediately. I saw how he did it, and it was easy as hell! But now all the entrances seem slammed shut. I was there once,” he can’t hide the longing in his voice, “but I don’t know how I did it, just as if somebody opened them for me. And now, when I try the same spells, nothing works as it should. I have no idea-”

“In your presence?” Arabella raises his eyebrows, suddenly irritated. “He walked through a mirror in your presence?”

Childermass looks down.

“It's stronger than ourselves, Mrs Strange,” he says quietly. “You can’t go back from there, a part of you will always stay behind the mirror.” 

“Stop that right now!” says Arabella angrily and Childermass looks at her in surprise, because even though he gets accustomed to her sharp tongue, certainly not expecting such an outburst. “What can you know about the King’s Roads and Faerie, you or Jonathan, you were there for a brief moment and didn’t see anything! I'll tell you about Faerie, John Childermass, everything that you don’t know, and then we’ll see if you continue to dream about getting back there!”

Stunned Childermass listens as Arabella spits out a stream of words, telling him about Lost-hope, about fairy dancers and dresses in non-existent colors, about haunting music and eerie magical torpor. Childermass trembles slightly. This Faerie doesn’t remind him of what he was able to see with his own eyes, but he doesn’t think it makes any difference. It doesn’t matter where one can go when he sets his feet on the King’s Roads; what really matters is to enter them.

“Could you draw the things that you’re talking about, Mrs Strange?” he interrupts her in mid-sentence.

“No!” winces Arabella, clearly surprised by his question. “Well, I certainly don’t intend to try.”

“And I do not know how to do it,” sighs Childermass. “So, time to get back to Vinculus’ symbols, that’s the only way that we have left. Perhaps magic won’t happen anymore.”

“At least we’re sensible,” snorts Arabella, but there’s a shadow of doubt in her eyes and Childermass knows that she can understand him.

“No,” he says quietly. “At least we're listless.”

Arabella looks at him with unspoken question in her eyes, but Childermass knows for sure that nothing will change, nothing will happen. The only thing they have left is apathy, the damned apathy of two sensible people that stay silent, and look at each other, and can do nothing else than that. Because nothing can really be said if they’re both afraid to do it. All the possibilities that they dare not consider reflect in the mirror in which they are not able to enter, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be able to catch up with Jonathan anyway. Maybe the King’s Roads were created especially for people like him, bold or mad - well, perhaps it's all the same - for people who can risk their hearts, souls and sanities to reach their goals, and maybe people like Arabella or himself were born just to watch, never to participate. Always from a distance, always on the right, safe side of the mirror.

Childermass sighs and buries his face in his hands. He hears Arabella rises from her chair and leaves the room, and for a moment wants to call her back, but he lacks any strength to do it. When he fights the need to get up, saddle Brewer and not to return to the house for the next few days, or perhaps never, he hears steps again. He raises his head to see Arabella standing beside him, strangely serious, with flaming cheeks and hands full of paper.

“My sketches from last months,” says Arabella, showing the drawings to Childermass. She sits on the chair arm and leans in his direction just like a small, inquisitive girl. Her loose braid touches the man's arm, tickles his cheek. Childermass nods and reaches for the drawings: his deck already told him that Arabella wasn’t entirely honest with him when she told him that she has none left, but he doesn’t say a word. He accepts her openness in exactly the same way as her previous distrust, without the slightest comment.

He slowly watches the drawings, one after another, unable to conceal his disappointment. The sketches of Padua and Clun are beautiful, yes, but there’s nothing in them that could resemble any entrance to Faerie. But now it seems that the magic that brought life to her previous sketches is long gone now, perhaps it left this world together with Jonathan and Norrell, and maybe that’s the very reason why Childermass lost the ability to reach deep into the mirror - if he ever had it at all, he thinks grimly. Therefore, although Arabella looks at him expectantly, he just shakes his head.

“It can’t work out,” he says with a sigh and puts the drawings aside. And then, as usual, he reaches for his cards.

*

The guest room in a house in Clun doesn’t seem very cozy, even though Arabella took care of every possible detail to make it more comfortable. Henry is not able to sleep well: just above his bed, somewhere in the attic, there is Childermass’ little room and he often hears the servant’s footsteps at night, nervous and restless, as if instead of going to sleep he hovers around the room like a caged animal. Arabella seems to behave strangely as well. Several times he is nearly sure that he have seen her returning from a night stroll with disheveled hair, wearing a dark dress that didn’t fit her at all. And one night, when he was unable to sleep and went into the living room, he found them both looking at some strange cards! Henry notices every unnatural event, every, even the smallest, sign of madness and he knows that his intuition was right: he came here at the right time, perhaps at the last moment to prevent scandal.

There’s something weirdly insane in this house, thinks Henry, and perhaps it’s all because of its weirdly insane inhabitants; the bright facade of the building and its large windows can’t hide from him what’s going on inside. Even the roads around the house end between the trees, leading nowhere at all. He tried to explore them once, when he went for a walk around the property, and he nearly got lost; since that time he no longer intends to leave the building.

It’s not hard to guess what was the cause of all this madness. Henry isn’t able to fathom the nature of magic that brought his sister back to life, but he heard enough about the exploits of Jonathan in the Peninsula - the story of bringing back to life dead Neapolitan deserters shook the whole England, and it reached even his vicarage - to fear for her soul.

Henry remembers well enough how much he was shaken by a letter from Venice, which was his last contact with Jonathan before his disappearance. Actually, he could expect something like that, watching his brother-in-law gradually going mad after Arabella’s death and trying every possible spell to revive her - despite all the animosity that he starts to feel towards Jonathan, he would never be able to believe that his old friend decided to murder his beloved wife - and he really tried to read his letters, even if they made him have terrible nightmares, but a plea for digging Arabella’s body out of the grave was way too much for him. It was probably the very moment when he finally lost any hope of bringing Jonathan back to sanity.

Of course he didn’t agreed to similar sacrilege, trying to bring Jonathan back to his senses, if not for his own sake, then at least for the sake of Arabella’s memory. And then he heard the news of Arabella’s desecrated grave and when he questioned the gravedigger of Clun, he knew who was to blame: if the man’s words were true, the description fitted Colquhoun Grant, who, as Henry was aware, after the battle of Waterloo became one of Jonathan’s closest friends. But this kind of madness was still unthinkable, as Grant was a soldier, not a magician, and if he ever showed any signs of insanity, he surely would be removed from the army.

Therefore, he wrote a letter to Grant asking him to clarify the situation, with high hopes that the explanations of the gravedigger prove to be inaccurate. The answer left him completely shocked: his brother-in-law’s best friend in short, blunt words not only didn’t deny his participation in digging up the grave, not only he confirmed that the coffin didn’t contain Arabella’s body, but a piece of moss oak, he also called him the superstitious provincial bigot and the reverend bonehead.

Henry, irate by this insults, tore Grant’s letter into pieces, cursing the depravity in the military and losing all the respect for its highest command, including Wellington - this explosion of anger, even though it surely didn’t fit with his position as a vicar, surely brought him a certain relief - and then he went directly to Norrell.

He vaguely remembered Childermass. Yes, he had a feeling of the servant’s intense presence behind his back during the entire conversation - it was indeed remarkable that Norrell allowed him to listen to everything instead of having him dismissed - but, in fact, he didn’t speak at all. Yet when the servant escorted him to the door, Henry thought he was going to ask him something, perhaps about some details of Jonathan’s madness that he concealed during the conversation. Childermass nearly started talking then, but he was interrupted by Lascelles, who leaned out of the room, and so he remained as silent as before.

Well, thinks Henry, whatever it was, it probably wasn’t that important.

Although, after all, in Norrell’s house Childermass seemed to know his place; he was a bit too arrogant, that’s true, but he didn’t overuse it. That’s why his status at Arabella’s house surprises Henry so much. Childermass seems more a guest than a servant and Henry is not able to control the thought that his behaviour is completely inappropriate. Oddly enough, he’s apparently the only person in the house who seems bothered by it.

“Bell, by God, I know that Christian love inspires us to treat everyone with kindness, but you spend too much time with this rogue!” he protests loudly. “It isn’t normal, he’s arrogant enough and yet you’re still encouraging him for more. Besides, it's not proper, people will start to think that your servant-”

“He’s a magician,” declares Arabella firmly, as if it explains everything. Well, it surely can, but certainly not in the way that Henry wanted. The vicar looks at her in surprise, as if this was the last answer he would expect.

“Who do you mean?” he asks suspiciously, hoping that he misheard her.

“John Childermass,” responses Arabella a bit too loudly. “John Childermass is a magician, just like Jonathan was. And he’s also my guest, just like you are.”

Henry turns red.

“So it was you who invited him here?”

“Actually, I didn’t,” admits Arabella, frowning slightly. “But it doesn’t change anything. We have our own affairs, Henry, and he’s going to stay here until we find a way how to deal with them. There is a certain magic-”

“No, anything but magic!” Henry grabs his sister by the hand and squeezes her tight. “Bell, leave it, please. Magic is not as safe as you think. Even Mr Norrell said that you have to watch what you are doing.”

“Henry,” says firmly Arabella, “it's nothing serious, a couple of symbols that I intend to read. There is nothing to fear, really. I know what I'm doing. And don’t mention about Norrell, never again.”

You're starting to act the way Jonathan did, Henry would like to answer. But he’s not going to talk about his demented brother-in-law in the presence of his wretched wife, so he just frowns.

“As you wish,” he mutters angrily. “But don’t even think that I'll leave you alone with this magic.”

*

In fact, Arabella doesn’t visit Childermass in the attic. She allows him to live there, but doesn’t intend to meddle in his affairs, not without his consent; she finally begins to understand that she should respect his privacy. This is his room and his alone, at least for the time being, and whatever he does, he should be able to use it freely. She already got her lesson, trying to take one of the cards from him, which was a false step. Childermass’ deck is probably the strangest magic of all those she happened to encounter, and she’s not going to pretend that she understands what he’s doing. That’s why she promises to herself that she won’t interfere, whatever happens.

But she forgets about all her decisions when she hears the sound of a breaking glass, coming out of the room in the attic. She runs up the stairs, hoping that the sound didn’t wake Henry from his nap, and she suddenly stops at the threshold.

The door to the small room are wide open, which seems quite unusual for her withdrawn and secretive guest, even though nobody comes to visit the attic, and it draws her attention. She finds Childermass sitting on a chair, surrounded by shards of a broken mirror; he seems to be angry and frustrated at the same time. Arabella’s sharp eyes easily spot the growing red stain on his shirt, just below the cravat; white material is wet with blood and the glass shards on the shirt flicker in the candlelight. Childermass angrily tugs the buttons of his waistcoat with shaking hands, as if unbuttoning it was way beyond his capabilities, but when he notices Arabella, he gives up, his hands limp by his sides.

“It still doesn’t want to listen to me, Mrs Strange,” he murmurs with resignation. “The magic. I don’t think it ever will, even if you still consider me a magician.”

“You were eavesdropping,” snorts Arabella, feeling her cheeks burn; whatever she said to Henry before, he needn’t have to know about it.

“I don’t have to eavesdrop to know about certain things, Mrs Strange.” Childermass smiles with grim triumph, his eyes blurred with laudanum. “Not me.”

Arabella rolls his eyes, but she knows that this isn’t the right time to argue; the stain on his shirt scares her more and more. She carefully evades the glass shards and in a few quick movements she unbuttons Childermass’ waistcoat and unties his cravat. The man initially doesn’t protest, too resigned or perhaps too intoxicated, but when woman's fingers trace the buttons of his shirt, he partially regains consciousness.

“I can handle myself with it, Mrs Strange, really,” he murmurs faintly and curls up in his chair.

“For God's sake, John Childermass,” Arabella puts her hands on her hips and looks at him with impatience. “I happened to see a man without his shirt on before, I was married to Jonathan, remember. I’m really not going to let you bleed to death in this room, so you can either let me help you, or I’m going to call Henry, and believe me, after something like this he’ll immediately throw you out of the house, so you'd better sit still and stop protesting.”

In fact, she feels desperate when she observes how much the unsuccessful attempts of reading the symbols and casting the spells both exhaust and frustrate Childermass, but she has no idea how to help him. She’s not able to understand the markings on Vinculus’ skin, even though she spends on them a few hours a day, and the King’s Roads still seem slammed shut since Jonathan’s disappearance. There’s not much that she can do, really, so she decides to focus on practical action, an area in which she finally doesn’t feel useless, on the contrary, she’s able to help much better than anyone else.

She carefully pulls a shard of glass from Childermass’ collarbone and presses her handkerchief to the slashed skin. The wound stops bleeding slowly and now it doesn’t seem to be very serious, no more than a scratch, really, but Childermass still sits upright with his eyes closed, as if trying to overcome the effects of laudanum by sheer force of will. Arabella carefully pulls a handkerchief and briefly looks at other injuries. Childermass’ body is one big tangle of scars visible on his pale skin in the same way that dark letters are visible on a white paper, a jumble of stories just as grim and complicated as the one that experienced them - and they tell about him nearly as much as his cards. These stories can be read much more easily than Vinculus’ symbols, though they seem equally mysterious. Arabella slowly folds the bloodied handkerchief, but discreetly looks at the scar on his arm, which seem relatively fresh; it distinguishes from his skin more than the others, still a little flushed. Perhaps she accidentally touched it with a soiled handkerchief. She leans toward the scar and gently wipes the blood.

“It’s a gift from lady Pole,” Childermass mutters, almost completely conscious now. He opens his eyes and rubs his unshaven cheek. “And this one’s from Henry Lascelles. I'm afraid, Mrs Strange, that there’s something going on between men named Henry and myself. Some poor astrologer would probably be able to make a pretty good prediction out of this.”

Arabella lifts her head and looks at Childermass questioningly.

“You mean my brother?”

“That too.” Childermass winces, although it is difficult to say whether in pain or with reluctance. “He’s able to tolerate my presence only because I was Norrell’s servant. But he’ll soon realize that I have nothing in common with him now.”

Arabella opens his mouth to deny his words, but she resigns; she knows that Childermass is right.

“I should talk to him,” she says with a soft sigh.

“What for, Mrs Strange?” Childermass shakes his head. There’s a smile on his lips that Arabella knows very well, partly bitter and partly mocking. “It won’t change anything.”

Arabella thinks for a moment, trying to find the words to answer him, but suddenly she hears the sound of footsteps and leaps to her feet, forgetting about the conversation. There’s Henry standing at the door, staring at them in disbelief, and after a moment he enters the room and grabs his sister's arm. There’s a horror on his face, as if he have just seen a ghost.

“Bell, what are you-”

Arabella looks at his brother, biting her lip, then frees her arm from his grasp and runs out of the room before he can stop her again.

*

The room in the attic is open wide, as if its occupant has nothing to hide. Henry stands in the doorway and looks around the room with a quick glance glance. He notices its interior, somewhat ascetic, but betraying Arabella’s feminine hand, some furniture, old but stylish and comfortable, a small window, covered by a curtain. In fact, one could get the impression that nobody lives here, if it wasn’t for an old trunk under the desk, a bloodied shirt lying on the floor and a dark greatcoat, tossed nonchalantly on the bed.

And, above all, if it wasn’t for the owner of the greatcoat, who, naked to the waist, sits in the corner of the room with a pipe in his hand, leaning against the wall and watching him with a slightly ironic smile.

“John Childermass,” mutters Henry angrily, looking at him with disapproval. “Mr Norrell’s former servant.”

“You wanted to ask about my references, Mr Woodhope?” Childermass puts his feet on a small stool and packs his pipe with a cheap tobacco. Henry can’t stop thinking that the servant doesn’t respect him in the slightest. “I'm afraid that finding my previous master may prove a bit troublesome. I swear, if I knew where he now resides, I would gladly directed you to him. Guess it would make you perfectly happy.”

“References!” Henry snorts. “I’d rather you to explain me one thing, Childermass. What are you doing here?”

Childermass raises his head and looks at him. Henry has the impression that for a short while he wishes to push the question aside, as if for some reason he prefers to avoid the answer. But the fleeting feeling passes quickly when Childermass shrugs, watching him with a neutral expression.

“Mr Norrell disappeared, and I had nowhere else to go. What else could I do than visit someone who knew him in the past?” He spreads his hands. “Not everyone is lucky enough to have a welcoming family, Mr Woodhope.”

His sarcasm seems subtle, almost imperceptible, but Henry understands it perfectly and frowns.

“You're not welcomed here,” he says angrily. “Besides, you aren’t Arabella’s servant.”

“I'm not,” agrees Childermass quietly. “Mrs Strange never asked me about it. “But after all of this,” he makes an indefinite gesture with his hand, “there were too many things left that needed to be explained, and we were the only ones that knew anything about them, your sister and myself. We still have some unresolved matters that we need to take care of, matters left by Jonathan,” he hesitates and Henry notes that the pause between the name and the surname is a bit too long to be accidental, “Strange.”

“Matters left by Strange!” repeats Henry furiously. The mere thought that this arrogant servant is taking care of anything left by his mad brother-in-law seems absurd to him. “Shouldn’t you rather take care of matters left by Norrell?” 

“It’s the same thing”, murmurs Childermass. He puts his pipe on the desk and looks at Henry grimly. “They were magicians, you know. Anything related to magic is a matter that concerns both of them, Mr Woodhope.”

Henry snorts, staring angrily at Childermass, and suddenly realizes that while the servant is sitting down, he’s standing in the doorway like a person of lower status. That’s why he sits stiffly in a chair, with his hands entwined, as if preparing to enter the pulpit.

“You shouldn’t involve my sister in your shady dealings. Let her live a normal life, the way that she always wanted!” He raises his voice. “Magic won’t help her in anything, it can only hurt her even more!”

“Mrs Strange alone decides how she wants to live,” says Childermass quietly. “Nobody forced her to deal with magic, me the least of all. You come with your pretensions to the wrong address, Mr Woodhope.”

“I know my sister better than you do, Childermass!”

“But much worse than Jonathan Strange did,” states Childermass blankly.

Henry leaps to his feet, in one swift motion he jumps to the servant and bangs his fist on the desk. The pipe hits the floor and breaks into two pieces, tobacco scatters all over the room.

“Jonathan Strange,” snaps Henry, “was mad, and yes, he almost dragged Bell with him, too. He was my dear friend before everything have started, and that’s why I find it even more regrettable, but let us have the courage to call a spade a spade! You must have heard what I said to Mr Norrell. Do you really think that ordering anyone to dig up their dead wives can be considered a normal behavior?

Childermass bites her lip and stares at Henry. His dark eyes seem to burn.

“Mrs Strange is alive,” he says quietly, slowly choosing his words. His voice lowers down to a hiss.

“But not because of him,” comments Henry, too irritated to reflect on the meaning of his words.

Childermass clenches his fists.

“You don’t have the slightest idea where he was, Mr Woodhope, and how far he went to save her.”

“And you think you’re the one who knows it, magician?” asks Henry, recalling Arabella’s words, and Childermass grimaces as if struck in the face.

“I know a lot more than you think.”

Henry notes that Childermass’ hand slips into the pocket of the dark greatcoat lying on the bed, as if looking for support or consolation, and he recalls that once or twice he caught the servant placing some hand-painted cards with strange patterns on the table. He stared at them as if he was looking for answers to the biggest secrets of the universe and Henry feels the sudden urge to laugh. So, is this the magic that Arabella tried to compare to the one known by Jonathan and Norrell? An old, hand-painted deck of damaged doodles? If this is true, he probably must be a very poor magician.

But the other, more careful Henry knows that should not underestimate a man who looks like a villain from Mrs Radcliffe’s novels or a demon from the moors. Childermass seem like a being from another world that Henry doesn’t understand at all; there’s a shade of something dark and gloomy within the servant, some devilish powers that no man is able to defeat. 

That's why Henry doesn’t show his amusement, just watches Childermass with growing suspicion.

“Better for you,” he states wryly and leaves the attic, resisting the temptation to turn back and see the reaction of the servant.

*

The next evening the card spread is extremely inauspicious.

For the first time in months he can’t find the Knight of Wands on the table, and this alone would be enough to make him feel uncomfortable, as if he’s deprived of something essential. There’s the Queen of Swords instead, quite frequent in the last few weeks, the Five of Cups, which seems nearly obvious to him, and the Pope, separating the previous two; he has no problem with deciphering them. Then he turns over the rest of cards, finding ever more bizarre combinations: the Ten of Coins, the Chariot, the Fool, the Six of Swords, the Tower, the Lovers and Death. This is not a typical, everyday spread; in fact, he really can’t remember if he ever saw something more ominous.

But this is not what makes Childermass shiver when he looks at the deck: the strange thing is that all the cards are reversed. He’s not even sure how he did it, perhaps he just shuffled his deck improperly, but this position, unnatural and sinister, destroys everything that could have any positive meaning in this peculiar spread; even the most fortunate symbols show their dark side and Childermass wonders whether the deck still wants to listen to him.

Shadows, reflections, mirrors of cards. They’re just like the other world, the one behind the King’s Roads, inexorably approaching them, breaking into the symbols and destroying any connections between them. An unnamed enemy, the one that nobody can escape from.

Childermass slowly touches the cards with his finger, although he knows well enough what it means. His brow furrows, his eyes are restless, full of fear.

“You better tell your brother not to do it, Mrs Strange.”

“Not to do what?” asks Arabella, apparently stunned by his unexpected anxiety.

Childermass shakes his head and says nothing. He can’t quite understand what is the circumstance that the cards try to warn him about, but he has never seen anything like this spread and he knows that whatever happens - and it will happen for sure - they have no chance to defend themselves against it.

“You’re afraid,” comments Arabella in an undertone. “Something is going to happen, is it not, Childermass? Something that concerns Henry. Should I tell him something? To leave, perhaps? To be more careful?”

“I don’t know,” he says and looks at her, his gaze full of fear. “I should get out of here.”

I should run away as far as possible when I still have the chance, he thinks terrified, because although the spread foretold a disaster for all of us, it’s the Five of Cups that will collapse under the weight of the Tower and there is no longer any Knight of Wands to watch over him and to ease the danger. I'm afraid, Mrs Strange, I'm scared like never before, you're right. I can’t just sit here and wait for something to happen.

He rises from his chair in one quick movement, its legs rasp the wooden floor. Confused Childermass tries to move the chair back to the previous position and suddenly he notices that his hands are shaking violently.

“Wait,” asks Arabella, also staring at his hands with eyes wide open. “Let's talk for a moment. Do not go to sleep yet, Childermass.”

Even if he wants to listen to her, he knows that he can’t stay in the house that now seems to strangle him. In quick, nervous movements he ties his cravat and puts on his greatcoat. Then he takes the cards from the table and puts them in his pocket. He clenches his fists, trying to regain self-control.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep now anyway, Mrs Strange,” he says grimly. “I'll better go for a walk in the garden.”

The walk lasts a long time; Childermass wanders around the house and discovers the paths of which existence he had no idea, and when he follows one of them, he reaches the hill on which he sees a grove of more than century-old trees. Their trunks and branches radiate magic, easy to spot even from a distance, and Childermass feels that this is the exact place where Ashfair stood for years, until it disappeared somewhere in Faerie. For a moment, he stops, leaning against a tree, and closes his eyes. He has the impression that he’s able to hear Jonathan’s voice, coming to him from a distance, and it sounds exactly as he remembers, a bit perky and a bit arrogant, shouting to him through different worlds. Childermass raises his head, trying to distinguish individual words: he feels that he have never been so close of understanding the very essence of the King’s Roads, but he still lacks something, some tiny thing that still escapes him.

“Give me a sign, I beg you,” he whispers, and he suddenly hears a strange sound behind his back.

He turns abruptly, and at the same moment the moon emerges from behind the clouds and Childermass notes the perpetrator of the noise: a grey, one-eyed cat with a ripped ear. The man leans over, extending his hand, and the animal approaches him with curiosity. It must be tamed, thinks Childermass, absently dipping his fingers in a grey fur.

“Well, if anyone knows the entrance to the King’s Roads, it must be you. Am I right, buddy?” he murmurs, stroking the cat. The animal arches its back, pokes its head against Childermass’ leg and stretches - and then it notes the moving shadows and in one leap disappears somewhere between the trees, as if actually managed to enter the Faerie.

Childermass dives into the bushes in search of the cat, but of course he’s not able to find anything that he have hoped for. Instead, he manages to rip his greatcoat, lose his hat and hurt his hand with a thorn. This, however, doesn’t have the slightest importance, because it seems to him that for a moment, with a corner of his eye, he sees the outlines of a house from between the trees and although he doesn’t know what Ashfair looked like before the magic wiped it from the face of the earth and if he didn’t simply reach somebody else’s estate, he feels even more anxious than before.

It all exhausts him much more than it should, so instead of coming home to Arabella, he saddles Brewer - the horse apparently is in a great mood - and travels several miles just to find the inn, in which he happened to spend the night once. He has no desire neither for company, nor for alcohol, but decides to search for both; and so he stays, listening to tales of his drunken companions and drinking his gin one glass after another, telling himself that perhaps he didn’t notice something in the spread. Maybe the next day his cards will explain more, and the threat will go away. He already survived many unfortunate spreads, after all, and the deck has always been on his side; he’s not even able to imagine a better ally.

But nothing is able to drown his fear.

*

Henry Woodhope knows the old saying that opportunity makes the thief. He uses it frequently, whether in a sermon, or in a private conversation, but even in his wildest dreams he haven’t been expecting that one day he’ll be able to apply it to himself. The very thought seems absurd to him, and he doesn’t plan to become a thief at all. He’s just bothered by the unexpected silence in the attic, and when he’s not able to hear the servant’s nervous footsteps over his head, he goes to the living room to see if that scoundrel doesn’t intend to draw Arabella in his divination tricks once again.

But when he stops in a dark hallway, he sees the front door opening: Childermass apparently had to spend the night away from home and now he totters inside, passing him without a word. He smells of alcohol - an observation that doesn’t surprise Henry at all - and perhaps that's why he throws his greatcoat over the chair, rather than take it with him to the room in the attic.

Henry waits until he can no longer hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs. He plans to go back to sleep, but suddenly, his gaze stops on Childermass’ greatcoat, barely visible in the dim light, and before he realizes what he’s doing, he slips his hand into its pocket. He’s able to discover a familiar shape and he has no doubt about what he have found. He snatches the deck in one quick movement and as quietly as possible goes back into his room.

He carefully closes the door, lights a candle and carefully puts his loot on the table. The whole house is sleeping, and that's good. Even the sound of the bloody servant’s steps don’t disturb the silence; he came back so late and so drunk that he probably fell asleep right away. Well, here’s another reason to quickly get rid of him from Arabella’s house, thinks Henry; it’s dangerous to have a drunken servant in the house, and even more dangerous to have a drunken magician.

He slowly scrolls the deck and with each new card he feels more and more horrified.

There’s something wrong with the drawings: they glow with some kind of strange, pagan magic, which is nothing like the solid, reliable spells used by Norrell, perhaps a bit more like the spontaneous, spectacular spells Jonathan was able to cast, but this one seems much darker. Henry notes a skeleton painted on one of the cards, a devil on another - and that is enough for him to know exactly everything that he should. Oh, the owner of the deck surely is a man who would not only unbury his sister’s body from the grave with no hesitation, but also bury her alive, if need be. He is worse than Jonathan - well, worse than ten Jonathans - and whatever are his reasons to stay in Clun, there must be something demonic behind this, some primaeval, powerful magic that can hurt Arabella much more than Jonathan’s madness already did.

“Who is this man?” whispers Henry with growing fear, and he already knows that for his sister’s good he must destroy every trace of this pagan, sinister magic that emanates from the cards, he must do everything in his power to get rid of Childermass as far from Clun as possible. Perhaps Arabella isn’t completely doomed yet, perhaps she is - she always had the tendency to fall for the wrong men, thinks Henry, suddenly forgetting about his own sincere friendship with Jonathan - but he decides to think about it later. Asylums are no longer dark and cruel like before, they’re taking good care of their patients now and perhaps Arabella would find her happiness again, if that’s what it takes to help her get back to normal. He'll do anything in his power to make it happen; he doesn’t mean Bedlam, no, certainly not, something much more friendly and intimate.

But he has to start from Childermass and his sinister magic. One shouldn’t be able to look to the future, one shouldn’t act like a tool of a powerful pagan force that has survived to modern times, and one certainly shouldn’t understand his sister better than he does, constantly mentioning about Jonathan. Henry isn’t really sure which one of these three is the worst offense in his eyes, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s not going to forgive any of them.

The fire is burning in the chimney - autumn is cold and damp - and Henry briefly warms his hands at the flame until he decides what to do next. He takes the cards from the desk and tosses them into the fire. Down with this heathen, sinister magic that could destroy his sister’s sanity! Although he still has no idea what the dispute between Jonathan and Norrell actually concerned, he finally begins to understand what the latter was afraid of.

Fire roars loudly, accepting his gift, the flames lick up the chimney, as if begging for more. Henry smiles as he watches the worn pieces of paper, rotating in the fire just like lost souls in hell. They finally returned to where they belong, he thinks, not intending to hide his satisfaction.

And then the room gets flooded by the black mist, too thick and heavy to be just an ordinary smoke. A stream of burning cards pours from the chimney straight towards Henry, painted characters glow with a strange, bluish fire: their faces wince dangerously, as if they really could feel anger and pain. Henry shields himself with his hands, but the gesture is not able to protect him from the attack: he feels burns, dozens of tiny burns, as if the flaming pieces of paper were a swarm of angry hornets.

Frightened, Henry pulls the handle, not being able to recall when he locked the door of his room - there have never been any key in here, he thinks in a fit of common sense and only then he begins to panic - and the cards hit the wall next to his head, one after the other, creating a fiery halo around his face. Now the whole room is on fire. Henry runs to the window, struggling with fear: it’s too high to jump, but he may be able to reach a tree branch. Finally he decides and opens it wide.

The air suddenly flows into the room and fire bursts with double strength; black mist covers Henry from head to toes, surrounding him with a cocoon of tar. He can’t see anything but darkness, ominous and impenetrable as the deepest depths of hell. At the same time he hears someone knocking at the door, pulling the handle, and finally trying to pry it open.

“Mr Woodhope?” Henry recognizes Childermass’ voice, hoarse from the alcohol, fierce and urgent. “Mr Woodhope, can you hear me?”

Don’t you dare to come near me, magician, neither you nor your cards from hell, Henry tries to answer, but he’s not able to open his mouth. He’s starting to lack breath, his lungs burns and he chokes, suffocating in a black fog and thick smoke.

He doesn’t even feel when the flames begin to consume him.

*

The fire burns out shortly after Woodhope's death, limiting itself to this one victim. The building isn’t destroyed completely, and although the guest room needs a complete renovation, the rest of the house is still fit for living. The losses are not as great as expected, judging by the smoke and flames. In fact, only one room was burned, the fire didn’t damage the structure of the building and no one died - no one except Woodhope - but Childermass feels some strange panic. There must be something more than just this one death, he thinks. Woodhope tried to do something reckless and risky, something that can bring destruction not only to himself, which already happened, but also to Arabella, and, most of all, to Childermass. Now it has to be clarified what it was all about, and perhaps this time his cards will tell him more.

He reaches for the deck and doesn’t find it in his pocket.

That’s why he nervously tries to reconstruct the events of the previous evening. He talked to Arabella in the living room and then he set out the cards for the last time; they ordered him to stop Henry, although he was unable to decipher what was going on. Then he put them into the pocket in his waistcoat, definitely, this gesture was nearly instinctive for him - or maybe not, maybe in his greatcoat. Perhaps he was so anxious that he mislaid them somewhere in the living room. Or he left them at the inn when he tried to drown his fear in a bottle of alcohol. He might even lost them somewhere when he ran down from the attic, trying to extinguish the fire. He can’t remember, but he methodically starts searching the whole house, room by room, and he’s still not able to not find the cards. Finally, there’s only one room left: the guest room, the one that was consumed by fire.

Childermass slowly comes inside, feeling that something happened here, something sinister and ghostly, much worse than the fire itself. The room reeks of smoke and he must cover his face with his cravat. The smell, sickeningly sweet, reminds him of death, as if Henry Woodhope’s charred body is still somewhere in the room. The walls are covered in a thick layer of soot, burnt furniture remind him of mutilated stumps, ashen scraps of paper rustle under his feet. Childermass tries not to succumb to panic; he slowly searches the debris, trying to convince himself that there is no possibility to find the deck in the room of Henry Woodhope, a man who after Arabella’s presumed death didn’t trust either magic or magicians, and Childermass most of all. They wait for him in the inn or he lost them somewhere during a walk, perhaps in the same place where he lost his hat, and if so, he’s still able to find them somehow, even if he’s going to search all the bushes in the area.

But the men named Henry have always brought him bad luck, using any means to reach their goals, and Childermass slowly begins to understand. Henry Lascelles didn’t go so far, yes, he destroyed almost everything that was within his reach, but didn’t dare to damage his deck; perhaps he was too well aware of the danger. But the vicar, confident in his strength and his righteousness, apparently became sure that he possessed the one and only answer to the question of what really happened with his sister. That was why he decided to resolve it in whatever way deemed most appropriate. Childermass already knows what happened: he still refuses to believe it, but his hands starts to shake more and more when he nervously rummages through the remains of burned furniture, book covers and other debris.

It lies exactly where the body of Woodhope was found, by the window, partially covered with soot. Childermass gently takes the Five of Cups, half-destroyed by the fire, in his hands, feeling burned just the same as the card. He carefully slips it into the pocket of his greatcoat, where he used to hide the whole deck, and with full strength he digs his nails into his hand, so as not to scream. Kneeling, he searches the room again, trying to find any fragments of other cards - no, perhaps just this one, the only one he cares about now - and finally he discovers a scrap nearly impossible to distinguish from any other piece of burn paper, if it wasn’t for a few barely visible red letters; he recognizes it, of course, he knows these cards as well as he knows himself, and this one in particular. He reaches for the burnt card and carefully tries to pick it up, holding his breath, but the paper is too damaged and the Knight of Wands crumbles in his fingers. Childermass presses his dirty hand to his cheek, ash blackens his face, and what was once a card - what was Jonathan - mixes with his tears, stains his cravat and shirt and Childermass no longer knows where lies the boundary between one and the other, between him and Jonathan, between England and Faerie, as if everything that kept him sane died in a fire together with Henry Woodhope. And perhaps it actually did, because Childermass starts seeing things that he tried to forget for years: he no longer needs to wake magic within him, he must do everything to suppress it again, before- before-

Blinded by tears, he runs to the attic, his heavy boots thump on the stairs, the wood creaks under his feet. Along the way, he passes someone, he pushes someone else on the wall, but he doesn’t even bother to look, because it doesn’t really matter, nothing matters with his whole world falling into ruin. At the edge of the stairs he stumbles and falls to his knees, breathing with difficulty. Images are flooding him one after another, impossible to decipher and understand without the cards’ help, reality blurs in front of his eyes and everything is drowning in a black fog; he senses only Jonathan Strange and the King’s Roads. And besides these two, there is nothing more.

“Childermass?” he hears Arabella’s concerned voice. “Childermass, what happened?”

Terrified, he leaps to his feet and runs into the room, not wasting time on closing the door behind him, and, with his eyes still full of tears, instinctively reaches for a bottle of laudanum. It slips from his trembling fingers and hits the floor, and the sound reflects in his head, multiplied by numerous echoes: it seems so loud that he has to scream, scream from the bottom of his lungs to drown it. The King’s Roads are at his fingertips, he can almost see Jonathan’s face, but something restrains his arms, binding him to this world, and the ropes are thick and strong; perhaps if he tries a little bit harder-

“Childermass!”

Someone is holding him by his arms, not a rope, but a human. Childermass tries to free himself from the grip, but has the impression that the outburst deprived him of any strength he had left, and that’s why he finally surrenders: trying to get rid of the mist covering his eyes, he wipes the tears with a sleeve, smearing the dirt on his face. Then he turns and looks at Arabella Strange as if seeing her for the first time in his life.

*

Another week seems to Arabella like a dream, or, more precisely, like a nightmare. She reluctantly leaves the safety of Clun and goes to Great Hitherden to take care of the funeral and any other affairs left after her tragically deceased brother. She meets Henry's former fiancee: Mrs Pearce, née Watkins, tries to be helpful, but all in all, she doesn’t give her enough support with her tasks. Arabella doesn’t want to comfort any sobbing lady, and she experiences her own mourning in a completely different way. She laments over her brother’s tragic death, of course, but she has to admit that she doesn’t miss him that much; he was too troublesome during the past few weeks. She misses Childermass much more, his stubbornness, sarcastic remarks and bitter half-smile that reminded her of Jonathan.

Maybe it really is Childermass, not Henry, who is the largest cause of her worry. She still remembers how frightened she was by his sudden outburst - the last thing one might expect from him - and how they weren’t able to calm him down, even though they tried almost everything, herself, the cook and the maid, all three of them equally terrified. Childermass didn’t become silent until he almost completely lost his voice from screaming, but it wasn’t the peace she had hoped for: he retreated into himself, strangely indifferent, absent-minded. And when she came to say goodbye to him before leaving, he ignored her completely, and even though she tried to get him to respond, he was answering in monosyllables completely unrelated to her questions, as if she was a stranger.

It was the very moment when she realized that she doesn’t have any right to inquire him about anything. Childermass comes and goes as it pleases him, and even if she begged him, he would do whatever he sees fit, just like Jeremy Johns’ cat.

She leaves Great Hitherden right after the funeral, and comes back as fast as she can. Her house in Clun seems to be strangely quiet and somber, as if it froze in anticipation of another disaster; its silence seem terribly unnatural and Arabella feels that there’s something more to blame for this than just Henry’s death. She slowly goes in, sensing the oncoming tragedy.

“It’s Mr Childermass.” The maid looks at her hesitantly. “He’s probably sick, ma'am. Even worse than before.”

Arabella lifts up her dress and runs to the attic. The room isn’t ventilated, on the contrary, it’s filled with smoke and stuffiness. Childermass sits on the bed in the corner of the room; despite the frowst he’s wrapped in his old, worn greatcoat, and he looks like he haven’t been sleeping the whole time since she went to Great Hitherden. He stares at an object which he holds in his hand with frantic gaze, and curls up next to the wall, more a statue than a living man. Arabella takes a deep breath and looks down, trying to hide her anxiety. She has the impression that Childermass aged a few years during the last week: there are traces of grey in his dark hair and deep shadows under his eyes. On the table beside the bed she notices a few laudanum bottles, all empty, but even the bottles cannot explain what really happened here.

When Arabella comes closer, she recognizes that the object which Childermass clutches so tightly is a piece of a burnt card and she feels a pang of sudden fear. She doesn’t understand yet how this could have happened, but she knows that the deck meant for him much more than anything else, more than Norrell, Jonathan and herself put together. These cards were not just owned by Childermass, they were the very soul of Childermass, his path and his home, his only true magic. And Arabella, the wife of Jonathan Strange, the greatest magician of modern times, knows too well what it’s like to take magic from someone for whom it means everything.

“My God,” she whispers, unable to say anything more.

She carefully untangles Childermass’ fingers and takes out a scrap of paper from them. She looks at the card: there’s a dark, half-burned figure in a long greatcoat, bowing down at something that Arabella is not able to guess. The bottom of the card is completely destroyed, leaving only a lonely figure, deprived of his world and his roots.

“This is me,” says Childermass quietly and Arabella knows it's true. This is how he must feel now, cut off from everything that was most precious to him, incomplete.

“What about the rest of the deck?” she asks cautiously, hoping that perhaps she is wrong, perhaps it’s not what she fears the most, and the remaining cards are safely hidden in the pocket of his greatcoat, as usual.

Childermass silently shakes his head and bites his lip.

“Are you sure?”

Nothing but the silence, severe, unbearable, hanging between them like a black curtain. Arabella tugs the laces of her dress in frustration, not knowing what she could say so as not to hurt him even more.

“You can draw a new deck,” she finally says, knowing for sure that these are not the words that Childermass wants to hear. “No, wait, I have a better idea. We can draw it together, if that’s what you prefer.”

The man looks at her with tormented eyes, and his gaze sharpens for a moment.

“There is no need, Mrs Strange,” he says quietly. There’s a hopelessness in his voice that leads Arabella to despair nearly equal to the one that she felt after her brother’s unexpected death. Then Childermass’ gaze drifts away again, wandering helplessly through the walls and furniture, trying to escape beyond the room, beyond Clun, beyond the whole world.

Arabella watches him with anxiety, but he doesn’t seem to notice her gaze. I've seen something like that once, she thinks, the same feeling of loss, but where was it? And then, in a sudden flash of understanding, she takes her drawing materials and cautiously, very cautiously rests her hand on his shoulder.

“Where are you now, Childermass?” she asks gently.

And Childermass answers, staring into space. He describes the forest, every tree and every branch, the road, stony and curved, old buildings that he sees, rocks that he passes. Arabella listens and draws, draws as accurately as possible, remembering that once, long ago, almost in a past life, she tried to draw the King’s Roads as Jonathan saw them. But Childermass’ story is the one that can awaken them completely under Arabella’s skillful hands. Jonathan, too impatient and capricious, would’ve never been a good guide, and his descriptions were too inaccurate for her to fill. Childermass, on the other hand, has enough drawing skills to know what details he should concentrate on, and his description is vivid and accurate; it’s easy to wander through the King’s Roads, having this Virgil at one’s side. Arabella feels that a pencil in her hand heats up like a living thing, and the landscape that she just sketched almost pulls her into the drawing. Childermass speaks louder and more passionately, and for a moment he manages to free himself from the previous apathy. But suddenly he starts to shake and he curls up in his chair. Arabella looks at him with concern.

“Are you still with me, Childermass?”

“I can’t go on.” The man's voice breaks, lowering to a whisper. “I don’t see the entrance.”

Then Arabella shows him the drawing. But when Childermass pulls his hands upon her in a silent plea, she presses her lips together and hides the sketch behind her back, out of his reach. There’s a hunger in the man's eyes that hurts almost physically and she knows that she has no right to forbid him to depart for a place which she never never allowed Jonathan to visit. Yet there are things that they have to explain to each other, questions that should be answered before Childermass leaves in search of Jonathan, straight into the world where all magicians disappear, beyond the sky, on the other side of the rain.

“Wait until tomorrow,” she whispers. And Childermass slowly nods.

*

Childermass doesn’t understand why Arabella tells him to wait one more day, when minutes seem like hours, and hours stretch into infinity, and each moment spent in this house seems like a torture. Perhaps he could take it by force, not waiting for her consent, but he feels that if he decided to do it, the King’s Roads wouldn’t allow him to enter again. Therefore, he waits, kneeling on the bed and staring at the clock, and he’s becoming more and more sure that never in his life been he have been so convinced of the rightness of any decision. Even without the cards’ help.

When the morning finally comes and Childermass goes down to the living room, Arabella is already there. With her sunken eyes and hair in disarray she looks like she also didn’t sleep well this night. When she notices him, she rises from her chair and hesitantly walks over to him, her face full of tension. She really hopes that she’s able to make me change my decision, thinks Childermass with a strange sadness and slowly shakes his head. Arabella looks at him in silence and sighs with resignation.

“Can I get the picture already, Mrs Strange?” asks Childermass hoarsely. For a moment he wants to tell her something more, but he isn’t really sure what. “Will you take care of my Brewer? He's already an old horse, and he served me well.”

“You didn’t change your mind, then,” says Arabella in a quiet voice.

Childermass shakes his head again.

“You knew it from the very beginning, didn’t you?” he asks softly.

“And you don’t intend to come back.”

“I can’t come back without my cards,” he admits in an unexpected burst of sincerity and Arabella grabs his hands tightly as if she wanted to keep him close as long as possible.

“Tell me one thing, Childermass, please. What was the promise that you made to Jonathan?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Mrs Strange,” replies Childermass gently. “But everyone is entitled to have their own secrets. You’re not the only one.”

Arabella remains silent for a moment, considering his words, and suddenly nods, as if she knows something that Childermass would never admit not only to her, but even to himself.

“You’re going to search for him,” she says in a quiet voice.

“For who, Norrell? No.” Childermass shrugs with impassive face and looks at her with a hint of regret. “I probably would in the past, you’re right. But it all ended when he wouldn’t let me help you.” He instinctively rubs his hand over the scar on his jaw. “He chose someone else’s help over mine, and I don’t owe him anything.”

“I wasn’t talking about Norrell.” Arabella shakes her head, watching him carefully, and Childermass has the impression that her observant gaze is trying to penetrate all the things he tries to hide, reaching even deeper than his cards. “I was talking about Jonathan.”

He’s not able to answer as he fears that his voice betrays too much, so he just nods.

“I talked to him after it was over,” confesses Arabella and Childermass suddenly knows that she would never reveal it to anyone else, the memory is too fragile and too valuable to share it with someone who wouldn’t have any idea that remain unchanged despite time, space and even magic. Therefore, he listens carefully to the story of what Arabella saw in the old well, and he involuntarily recalls his own correspondence with the magician. There must be some unknown force that allows Jonathan to do whatever it takes to communicate with his loved ones. This is exactly this kind of strength that he himself lacks.

“Wells,” whispers Childermass. “Wells, mirrors, puddles. Drawings. There are entrances everywhere.”

His gaze becomes hazy for a moment, reality blurs before his eyes, and once again he finds himself trapped between the two worlds, but the feeling passes when Arabella squeezes his hand even tighter. Childermass looks at her with confusion for a moment, then he takes a deep breath and begins to talk.

“He wanted me to join him.” He hesitates, the words come out of his mouth carefully, as if against his will. “The time when he thought you were dead. I couldn’t do it, it wasn’t the right time. But perhaps if I did what he asked, and walked away from Norrell’s side, you wouldn’t be alone now.”

This isn’t the whole truth yet, but he’s not able to tell more. 

“So, that wasn’t about deciphering the inscriptions from Vinculus’ skin,” Arabella mutters and shakes her head slowly. “You wanted to find him. From the very beginning.”

“That’s true,” Childermass admits quietly. “But I’m not able to enter the Roads without any help. I'm much worse magician than he thought, Mrs Strange.”

“And what about your promise?” 

This may sound like an accusation, and Childermass knows that he should feel at least a bit of remorse that he’s going to break this promise: he swore Jonathan to take care of the English magic, after all. But now he knows that he’s really not skilled enough, Vinculus and Segundus seem much more talented than him and perhaps he should leave the matter to them. Besides, he’s accustomed to doing things when one has to forget about remorse, or even about the fact that one has a conscience at all, so why should this time be any different?

“The Knight of Wands,” he responds, as if it explains everything.

It's irrational, but Arabella suddenly seems to understand, perhaps even more than he does. She remains silent, gazing at him intently, and Childermass doesn’t need any words to know what is the message that he should convey to Jonathan if they ever met. And that she’ll never stand against him, whatever he’s going to do.

“There’s nothing that keeps me here,” he says hoarsely, and at the same time he begins to understand that this isn’t true. Arabella’s hands are warm and soothing, and despite all the delicacy there’s an unexpected strength hidden in them. It would be so easy to allow them to hold him and to lead him, in the same way that his cards did. So easy.

He was never the one to reach for simple solutions.

“I can handle myself,” says Arabella and Childermass knows that she’s telling the truth. For a moment he looks into her eyes, trying to tell her everything that he was never able to say, and slowly nods. He smiles gently, as he didn’t for a long time. 

And then he pulls his hands from her grasp and boldly steps into the drawing.


End file.
